It has a presence in nine overseas countries, including Turkey, China and Ukraine. At home in Kazakhstan, it is the largest bank with a 25% market share by both assets and loans.
Chairman Roman Solodchenko is not short of ambition. At a recent lunch meeting in London, he said: “We are the largest bank in Kazakhstan and the most universal bank in the country. We are the largest private bank in the CIS and we think, at our current growth rates, we will be challenging [the big Russian state-owned banks] Sberbank, Vneshtorgbank and Gazprombank in a couple of years.”
China is an interesting market for the bank because, given the geographical position of Kazakhstan and its common border, it is focusing its efforts on western China, far from the operations of the big international banks. A representative office will be converted into a subsidiary before the end of the year and in three years’ time BankTuranAlem can enter the China market itself.
